Spit Bridge to Manly Walk

The weekend following our city tour and walk to Coogee, we decided to take another walk, this time on the north side of the Sydney Harbour. The walk from the Spit Bridge to Manly (another hot spot for surfing) is slightly longer than the Bondi at 10 km long, so we decided to make an earlier start of it.

We took the bus instead of the train so we got to see the city as we left it. No pictures though because I started getting car sick. Bus drivers seem to drive very aggressively.

We got off the bus and started the walk across the Spit Bridge. It was next to a really large mooring area for sailboats.

One of the many sailing harbours in Sydney

Cory wanted to Spit under the Spit Bridge…. I have video but it really isn't exciting. Really.

And then the journey began!

One of the many amazing birds in Sydney. They are so striking compared to those back home.

A closer look

Starting down the trail.

This lizard was way bigger than the picture makes it look.

More fun outcroppings

Looks kind of like we are in the middle of a mountain range rather than right on the water's edge.

This walk was more rugged compared to the Bondi walk, so we were quite excited because it was more what we had in mind when we first started off the previous weekend. And when I say rugged, we still had paved paths or boardwalks but it was... less traveled? More overgrown? less developed? I'm not sure what it was but it was a nice contrast to the weekend before.

A beach?! Say it isn't so!

Examining one of the outcroppings on the walk

Contemplation

We thought we had ventured quite far at this point.

We were wrong.

Another beach! With dogs having fun!

This sign was quite common along this path. We saw it at pretty much everywhere.

Another rock! This one across the road.

There were a lot of starfish along this portion of the trail.
Of course Cory picking it up made all of the kids in the group behind us also want to pick one up.

This picture does not accurately portray the color blue we say. It was amazing.

Had to get 'the point' in.

And Mezz had to climb a rock.

 More contemplation

"Stairway to Heaven"

We walked upstairs for what felt like an eternity. The above picture was taken when we were only about half way up the mountain; although we had no idea it was still that much further to reach the top.

By this point I was hungry. Luckily we had the foresight to pack a lunch after our walk last weekend, so we whipped out the sandwiches I made once we reached what was called 'The Grotto'.

This is me saying "You are really going to take a picture of us eating?"

View from our lunch spot- it's the entrance to the Sydney Harbour

After I finished chowing down, I finally decided to get up and walk around the grotto area. It apparently used to be an Aborigine site of significance.

Look closely for the fish.
This was the only rock carving I could actually see although there were others.

Sydney City is off in the distance!

All of the stair-climbing made sense once we saw how high we really were

More pointing

This was much more exciting when I thought the city would come out larger

We continued our trek up the mountain (more stairs!) and found another open area not too far away with a bunch of college students drinking wine. I thought it was a pretty cool way to spend Saturday afternoon, although I was wondering if it was really worth the effort to walk all the way up there and then have to walk back tipsy.

Turns out there was a car park about 200 meters further up the trail.

Another view of the harbour entrance

From this point, we just had a huge descent back down the mountain. It almost seemed to take as long as the journey up did. We passed through a lot of trees and made it to the farside of the inlet that Manly is on. From there, we had to walk all the way around before we got into the town of Manly when things started to look more like the Bondi walk again.

These signs were the beginning of Cory's obsession with seeing penguins

Finally walking down the main road in Manly!

Manly Beach

Eventually we made it to Manly. It was later in the afternoon, so we stopped for some drinks and dinner before catching the ferry back to the city. Unfortunately, we left too late in the day to get any good pictures of the city from the water, but we knew we'd have more opportunities in the future.

We explored late-night Sydney City and then headed out to the fish markets in the morning. I can't wait until you all see what we found there!